London King’s College Hospital Trace Element Laboratory

The Laboratory at King’s College Hospital (KCH) is one of only 3 Supra-Regional Assay Service (SAS) designated trace element laboratories within the UK. The laboratory provides a specialist assay and interpretation service for about 20 individual elements in whole blood, urine, plasma/serum, liver/biopsies and other esoteric matrices (e.g. tablets), using state-of-the-art inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The latter allows multi-element analysis on an individual sample, thereby reducing sample volume requirements, and improving turn-around-times.

Assay performance is regularly assessed by participation in external quality assessment schemes including: UKNEQAS (range of analytes in whole blood, serum, urine and solid matrix) and EQUIP (urine iodine). The laboratory is also approved by the Health and Safety Executive for the occupational monitoring of lead and cadmium, and has full CPA accreditation.

The laboratory works closely with the Institute of Liver Studies at KCH, and has ongoing collaborative studies on metal metabolism in patients with underlying genetic disorders (e.g. haemochromatosis, Wilson Disease).

Dr Kishor Raja, Laboratory Director, is a member of the King’s College London Iron Metabolism – Interdisciplinary Research Group and participates in research and development programmes (both internal/external). Mr Simon Handley is studying for a PhD (part-time) centered on hepcidin measurement by liquid chromatography-high resolution-mass spectrometry (LC-HR-MS).